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> It is high time for non-Native Americans to come to terms with the fact that the United States is built on someone else's land. As usual, the concepts of "na

> It is high time for non-Native Americans to come to terms with the fact that the United States is built on someone else's land. As usual, the concepts of "native United States citizen" and "native North American aborigine" are being conflated. The United States is a "nation of colonists". The Republic did not precede the North-Western European colonists who founded it. Demands for non-Aborigionies to acknowledge "someone else's land" stem from a failure to distinguish between United States citizenship and chance birth on the North American continent. The North American Aborigine peoples may have historically been born on the North American landmass, but they were not the founders of the United States nor the people whose interests said nation was designed to further. The disorganized aboriginals variously aided or hindered the expansion of the Republic depending on the particular tribe's short term ends. The European pioneers did not "steal" a pre-existing democratic republic, rather, they struggled, triumphed, and created their own for their progeny. North American Aborigines lived outside the republic until reservations were allotted to them, reservations which they largely continue to live apart in today. Frankly, the tone of the parent article smacks of 1960s-era Baby Boomer coming-of-age politics. Its high time to question this line of thinking.

afarrell 12y ago
I don't see how either this quote or the article from which it is drawn conflates those those two categories of people. Indeed, it says that we "conquered" the native lands, a word that usually refers to one polity expanding from lands of its own into lands outside of it. It presupposes that native american lands were outside of the United States. Yes, the European pioneers struggled. Both a military campaign and an agricultural enterprise are very difficult.
mr_luc 12y ago
I agree that "someone else's land" is a bit much. Saying that "North American Aborigines lived outside the republic" is a bit misleading, because it insinuates that they weren't interested in assimilating, and becoming a part of that struggling, triumphing mass of people that identified as Americans at that time. More truthfully, leading up to the times when they were forcibly relocated to reservations, they were never allowed in, for the same reasons that black residents of the US had a tough time in those years: the world around them was quite racist and (especially in the case of indians) kleptomaniac. In fact, many Native Americans tried to assimilate; I remember reading about one enterprising native gent in the early 1800s who had made himself quite rich from trade, had a mansion, the whole nine yards ... until the day came when his town wanted his stuff. So they took it, because America was in large part founded on the notion of repeatedly taking stuff that the natives considered their property. Acknowledging the massive wrongs committed by this country against those peoples isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I agree with you that we need to be realistic about what conclusions we draw from it. Yes, the United States stole stuff from the indians. No, we're not going to now consider dispossessing the current owners of that stuff; that's akin to, say, questioning the rightness of the origins of modern-day Israel. There's a state there now, so it's moot.
- cmurf 12y ago
  This is a bad analogy because Israel continues in the modern day to usurp land from Palestinians, forcing them to self-dispossess. So if you're going to say exportation and colonization is wrong and should be illegal, you're right, this was learned during WWII and codified in the Geneva Conventions after it and why all Jewish settler land acquired on Arab villages is considered illegal by the international community minus Israel. And yet this land transfer continues as settlements are expanded, today. So it is not moot to question the rightness of modern day Israel or any other state that forces an indigenous population to self-dispossess.
dreamweapon 12y ago
The European pioneers did not "steal" a pre-existing democratic republic, Correct. They didn't steal a pre-existing political entity analogous to their own. What they stole was land and resources. Through force, manipulation, guile, rape, and genocide.
xacaxulu 12y ago
This argument could be extended to literally any people, at any time in history who explored, conquered, annexed or founded a colony/country on a parcel of land that had been explored or lived on before. Franks, Gauls, Nordic vikings, Indo-Europeans, Phoenecians, Romans. They're all in the same club of explorers, navigators, warriors, tradesman, etc. It's also a major logical fallacy to assign current moral/ethical mores to a totally different time and place in history. "But it was bad that the Aztecs ripped hearts out of innocent virgins." Yeah, it was insanely horrible, but at the time that act kept the earth spinning and the gods happy (in their belief system). Want to go back in time and make the argument against that?
- afarrell 12y ago
  So generally, if you buy something from a burglar which belonged to someone else until some act of violence, the law does not recognize your ownership over the property but instead would demand you return it to its original owner. For practical purposes, it doesn't make sense to give that land back wholesale. But it is relevant to, for example, a Libertarian reading Robert Nozick and claiming that he has a moral right to his property because it was originally claimed legally and then transferred through a chain of non-coersive transactions.

afarrell 12y ago

I don't see how either this quote or the article from which it is drawn conflates those those two categories of people. Indeed, it says that we "conquered" the native lands, a word that usually refers to one polity expanding from lands of its own into lands outside of it. It presupposes that native american lands were outside of the United States. Yes, the European pioneers struggled. Both a military campaign and an agricultural enterprise are very difficult.

mr_luc 12y ago

I agree that "someone else's land" is a bit much. Saying that "North American Aborigines lived outside the republic" is a bit misleading, because it insinuates that they weren't interested in assimilating, and becoming a part of that struggling, triumphing mass of people that identified as Americans at that time. More truthfully, leading up to the times when they were forcibly relocated to reservations, they were never allowed in, for the same reasons that black residents of the US had a tough time in those years: the world around them was quite racist and (especially in the case of indians) kleptomaniac. In fact, many Native Americans tried to assimilate; I remember reading about one enterprising native gent in the early 1800s who had made himself quite rich from trade, had a mansion, the whole nine yards ... until the day came when his town wanted his stuff. So they took it, because America was in large part founded on the notion of repeatedly taking stuff that the natives considered their property. Acknowledging the massive wrongs committed by this country against those peoples isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I agree with you that we need to be realistic about what conclusions we draw from it. Yes, the United States stole stuff from the indians. No, we're not going to now consider dispossessing the current owners of that stuff; that's akin to, say, questioning the rightness of the origins of modern-day Israel. There's a state there now, so it's moot.

cmurf 12y ago
This is a bad analogy because Israel continues in the modern day to usurp land from Palestinians, forcing them to self-dispossess. So if you're going to say exportation and colonization is wrong and should be illegal, you're right, this was learned during WWII and codified in the Geneva Conventions after it and why all Jewish settler land acquired on Arab villages is considered illegal by the international community minus Israel. And yet this land transfer continues as settlements are expanded, today. So it is not moot to question the rightness of modern day Israel or any other state that forces an indigenous population to self-dispossess.

dreamweapon 12y ago

The European pioneers did not "steal" a pre-existing democratic republic, Correct. They didn't steal a pre-existing political entity analogous to their own. What they stole was land and resources. Through force, manipulation, guile, rape, and genocide.

xacaxulu 12y ago

This argument could be extended to literally any people, at any time in history who explored, conquered, annexed or founded a colony/country on a parcel of land that had been explored or lived on before. Franks, Gauls, Nordic vikings, Indo-Europeans, Phoenecians, Romans. They're all in the same club of explorers, navigators, warriors, tradesman, etc. It's also a major logical fallacy to assign current moral/ethical mores to a totally different time and place in history. "But it was bad that the Aztecs ripped hearts out of innocent virgins." Yeah, it was insanely horrible, but at the time that act kept the earth spinning and the gods happy (in their belief system). Want to go back in time and make the argument against that?

afarrell 12y ago
So generally, if you buy something from a burglar which belonged to someone else until some act of violence, the law does not recognize your ownership over the property but instead would demand you return it to its original owner. For practical purposes, it doesn't make sense to give that land back wholesale. But it is relevant to, for example, a Libertarian reading Robert Nozick and claiming that he has a moral right to his property because it was originally claimed legally and then transferred through a chain of non-coersive transactions.